Dunk Island

@ Dunk island

The weather gods are not really with us, as there’s too much wind and waves to feel comfortable in our boat. Weather forecast where we are and up north still gives winds 20+ knots, so in planning our route we set course for Dunk Island. Dunk Island is the largest island in the group of the Family Islands.
The actual distance wasn’t that long, but again we had a very choppy ride with lots of scattered showers en route. We anchored in Brammo Bay, just opposite the Dunk Island Resort which was destroyed in cyclone Yasi 2011. In 2016 re-building has started – as we could see- but several buildings still have no roof.

We pretended to be made of sugar and therefore we didn’t explore the island on that rainy day.

In the early evening our anchorage started to get really rolly, but it’s too dark to move on. The anchor proves its good holding and we feel safe. Strong wind gusts can be heard accompanied by (still and again ) heavy rain, but we’re sitting outside on our back deck. Our closed shadow clears are keeping us dry against the horizontal falling rain. Thanks again to Mark, (Marine Elite Trimming, Cannonvale) who provided us with them in a „last minute job“ .

Brammo Bay is a really nice spot to stay, but in these weather conditions not an ideal overnight anchorages.
With the first daylight next morning we left to hide in a river mouth along the mainland, in Mourilyan Harbour.

This 22,5 nautical miles felt like a never-ending story. Ingo had to carefully steer all the way, no chance to use the auto-pilot at all and we had to be highly concentrated on the waves and swell.